Stolte Promotes Accounting Regulation Changes At NCOIL Meeting

A leading insurance regulator is asking state legislators for help with adding tougher internal control and financial reporting requirements to state insurance accounting rules.[@@]

Douglas Stolte, chairman of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners/American Institute of Certified Public Accountants working group at the NAIC, Kansas City, Mo., talked about the panel’s efforts earlier this week in Newport, R.I., at the summer meeting of the National Conference of Insurance Legislators, Troy, N.Y.

The working group has been drafting revisions to the NAIC’s influential Model Audit Rule.

Working group members have drafted additions based on internal control and financial reporting provisions in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which governs publicly traded companies in all industries.

Regulators copied the SOX provisions because the provisions promote the use of “the best practices regulators believed should apply to all insurers for auditor independence, corporate responsibility and internal controls over financial reporting,” Stolte, who is the deputy insurance commissioner in Virginia, said at the NCOIL meeting, according to a written version of his presentation.